compacted rainbow
by chandelure
Summary: and tomorrow night, when you come back, you won't remember any of this. —PaulDawn, AU


**a/n; **So, this is an Alice In Wonderland!Universe Fic! I wanted to do this, and I wrote it in a few hours, so sorry if it's complete doo-doo.

**disclaimer; **I don't own Pokemon _or _Alice In Wonderland. No durr.

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compacted rainbow

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Her life is excruciatingly dull—full of pretty dresses and handsome men and so-boring-you-could-almost-die dances. Admittedly, she is partial to dancing, but no amount of ballroom lessons can keep one such as her obedient.

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"Mother," She sighs, at the young age of ten, after a day of embroidery and sipping tea, "when will I be allowed to leave this awful life?"

The blue-haired woman starts at the question. "Darling, you mustn't ask questions like that. It is not proper."

"But that's what I mean!" The girl exclaims, popping up from under the covers. "This isn't proper, that isn't proper—I'm tired of it all!"

"Dawn!" Her mother reprimands. "You will be a proper young lady, and you will _mind your manners_."

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Her dreams are of shattering glass that night, of stopped clocks and deep, deep holes with no ending to them, and it is the beginning of a world beyond her imagination—with Queens and Kings and cats and hats and tea.

She is slightly sickened by the concept of it all, for it seems like a horrible world, with rules stricter than the ones she has lived by and Queens with pinched faces, never smiling.

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"Mother," She murmurs, as a respectable lady of fifteen should, "Why are we going to this party? Barry's family hasn't made contact with us since we were much younger."

Her mother sighs. "After all this time, Dawn, I would think you would understand." Her daughter's eyebrow lifts. "It would be improper to turn down their invitation, seeing that you were such good friends back then."

"Ah, of course." Dawn snorts. "We must be proper. Am I not correct, Mother?"

Her mother, of course, would've snapped at her daughter for such awful behavior, but they have arrived, and so she doesn't waste her breath. "Come, Dawn. We are here."

"Johanna!" A high pitched voice shrills. "You're _here_, darling!" A tall brunette runs toward the two, a lanky blond boy trailing behind her.

"Missa. It is wonderful to see you again." Johanna replies, curt yet warm.

"Oh, my! Is this Dawn?" Missa fusses. "Barry! Come say hello to Dawn!" The blond drags himself over.

"D-Dawn?" He stutters out, amber eyes wide in surprise for a second, before he straightens up. "It's good to see you again." Somewhere in the background, the musicians have started to play a slow dance. Inwardly, the girl groans. Here comes the inevitable. "May I have this dance?"

"I would love that." She says demurely, exactly as she should. She is vaguely aware of Missa squacking about finding her husband for the dance, but rather tunes the noise out and focuses on a spot behind Barry's head.

It continues like this for a while until she sees a flicker of lavender and drops her hands from Barry's grip, startled. "Dawn?" She registers him ask, voice concerned, but she is not concentrating on him.

"Please excuse me, Barry." She says, and rushes off, dress pulled up in one hand and the other clutching her chest.

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Somewhere, her mind is reminding her that this is not the first time she has seen things—once she could've sworn she'd seen a regal girl in red, with a boy with green hair next to her, expression just as aloof, and another time a boy with black hair stuffed in a strange hat had been talking to an equally strange yellow rat, just in her line of vision—, but she ignores it, as this lavender—it is real, she is sure of it.

The maze is elaborate, and she hears people calling for her—"_Dawn! Dawn, where are you?_"—, but she continues running, making sharp twists as she sees the lavender, until she finds herself in a place she cannot recall from her earlier visits—a large tree at the heart of the twisting bushes. "On second thought," She mutters, "I may remember this place. Although it is a wisp of a memory."

"Is that so?" A voice, haughty and cold, questions to her side, and she leaps, terrified her excursion is over. Instead, she sees a boy—man, really—with lavender hair, dressed in a tailored coat and simple pants.

"_Lavender_..." She breathes. "Who are—?"

He is gone, and it is only then that she notices the hole in front of her. It is familiar, in a vague way, and she would not be surprised if she has dreamed of it before.

She takes a deep breath, and leaps.

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On the way down, passing tables and stairs and chairs and doors and floors, she is only reminiscent of a few things—that her skirt was billowing up and that it was extremely immodest, and that she was probably going to die.

But, miracles _do _happen, sometimes—although rarely ones like these—, and she survives without a scratch. "Now _that _is strange." She says out loud, without realizing there is someone to see her.

"Strange isn't a word down here," the boy from above smirks.

She is calm at his sudden appearance, and it strikes her that she is taking this extremely well. "Is that so?"

A snort. "Yes, that's so. Strange doesn't exist because down here _everything _is strange, and everyone is mad."

She is indignant. "I beg to differ! I am completely normal—I'm down here, and there is no way I'm _mad_."

"Well—you _are _the one who imagined this world up, so I don't think you can be right in the head."

"Excuse me?" She sputters.

He looks remarkably pleased at her reaction, and the rational part of her whispers that she isn't being proper.

"I'm usually supposed to leave the whole test thing out for you, but I think you wouldn't be able to handle that, and I'd get in more trouble if you started to cry."

Her fury is skyrocketing by the second. "_Excuse me?_"

She desperately wants to slap that smirk off of his face. "You know, it isn't proper to be angry,"

"Aghjsk!" She is pulling at her hair now, and his smirk just grows larger. "You know what?" She remarks, "You can just go—MMPH!"

She is sharply cut off by his hand. "Don't say things like that." He hisses. "If you tell me to go die, I _will _go die, because this is your world, and, whether you like it or not, you thought me up."

She is quiet after that, and he leads her through the door.

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She isn't speechless, like the first time she came, he notes—and she isn't indifferent, like that one time after a particularly bad day, when she came down in a huff and he was there to meet her. _Those _are the bad times. But he is her guide, and although she knows the land better than he does, with her coming every night, she can never remember anything. It irritates him, honestly, that she is completely clueless.

The scenery is huge, although neither of them had shrunk down to size, as they would if he actually followed the absurd rules of the place.

Their companion is silence for a while, until the trees in one place—ridiculously small compared to the others—move and she squeaks.

He sighs. They went over this every day. "It's just Torterra."

"W-what?" She chokes out, and he smirks at her expression. This, of course, just infuriates her, and she promptly forgets her previous worries in favor of reprimanding him.

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He has to force her into the forest, because she blabbers something involving multiple exclamation marks, but he doesn't really mind, because the most amusing part has yet to come.

She is finally settling in to her dark surroundings when a boy suddenly pops up in front of them. She screeches, clinging to his side, while the smirking (honestly, if she made this place, _why _would she make all these obnoxious people?) boy, clad in striped cloth, laughs an annoying little laugh.

"Gary."

The spiky-haired boy looks at the guide and disappears again. "Wh-who was that?" Dawn stutters at his side.

"No worries. He won't bother us again." She looks relieved, and he can't help but feel fulfilled. This is what he lives for, mind you—keeping her happy. He was created to be her guide.

So he takes her hand, smirking at her flush, and keeps moving forward. Because this is what he's made to do.

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"Heyyyy! Look who's here!" There is a droning sort of voice calling out, altogether too happy for it's own good, and Dawn flinches, almost instinctively, as if expecting something not very looked forward to.

He thoroughly agrees. "Oi, oi, Paul! Does she remember yet?"

"Paul? Is that your name?" The cheerful boy in the hat looks downcast all of a sudden, as if her curious words are something to be upset about.

He grunts. "Come on, Dawn. Let's go. I can't deal with this idiot today."

"Hey! I'm not an idiot!"

Neither of the retreating backs say anything in return.

"Aw, Pikachu, they left again!" The boy says dejectedly to the mouse-like creature next to him. The yellow rat just rolls its eyes and returns to its plate.

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"Is that a castle?" She questions, awestruck by the spindly towers, red and oddly similar to the look of a rose. "It's beautiful."

"Yeah." He mutters. "It's beautiful."

"I mean, it's not like I haven't seen castles before—there are loads of them around—but this one is just gorgeous." She blabbers.

He remains quiet, and she doesn't continue to talk.

The whole point of the silence, however, is broken when the arguing voices of two boys drift into earshot.

And as they round the corner into the beginning of the maze, they see the sources of the voices. A redhead and a boy with black hair are in the midst of white rose bushes, with paintbrushes dipped in red hanging from their hands.

"You _idiot_! They're supposed to be _red_!" One exclaims.

"Oh, shut up, Ethan." The other mutters. "It's your fault anyway, just like it always is."

"Take the blame for once, Silver!" Ethan begs. "One more mistake and I'm out!"

"Exactly."

Paul takes her hand and drags her past them before she can make conversation. "Not a good idea."

She laughs, for the first time that day-night. "You know, I haven't seen any girls yet. Why is that?"

He drops her hand and lets her walk past the next bend by herself. "No girls, huh?" He snickers, catching up to her standing dumbly in front of three girls—two brunettes and a redhead, the one with lighter brown hair in red and the other two in white.

"Paul, Dawn." The red-clad girl addresses them in a warm tone, if not curtly. The girls behind her smile widely. "You're just in time for tea."

"Your Highness." Paul says for the two of them.

A boy—_another _boy, Dawn notes. It seemed terribly sexist for her to only create boys. Shame.—walks out, with a crown on his green head and a smirk—_and _another boy who is annoying. Really, what was she _thinking_?—in place on his handsome face.

"May." He whips out a rose from nowhere and tucks it behind her ear. Her face softens a bit at the gesture, and she smiles at him.

"Drew." She then turns to the rest of her company. "Let us go in."

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It is the second that they walk inside the door that a watch rings shrilly. "Time to go." Paul mutters, turning the alarm off. "Sorry."

"What a shame." May—The Queen, Her Highness, whatever—says, sincere shining in her cerulean eyes.

Her guide takes her hand, and leads her out. "Wh-what? But Paul, we can't _leave_!"

"Not we." He states gruffly. "You."

"I refuse!" Dawn growls angrily. "I absolutely will _not _leave—especially not without you!"

"Dawn," Paul says wearily. "This whole place is make-believe. Somehow, we exist out of your sleep, because of your strong willpower, but I can't leave unless I'm fetching you."

"No." She murmurs, almost looking heartbroken. "I don't want to leave!"

Paul stares at her. The one good thing about this situation, he realizes, is that he gets to fall in love with her every day of his life. After all, everyone in her world age with her.

"You have to leave." It is a determined statement, and she understands that he won't force her to leave—but she has to.

She pauses. "Tomorrow, I'm going to come back, aren't I?" She asks, not expecting an answer. "And I won't remember this and you will."

He nods.

She turns to leave, but he catches her hand—out of character, just like every day around this time—, spins her around, and kisses her. She kisses back, but pulls away.

"I have to go now." She says, eyes pained.

"I love you." He mutters calmly, like it's completely normal for him to say that.

She nods. "I love you too. Although I've barely gotten to know you."

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Yes, he thinks. The best part about this all is getting to fall in love with her every day.

**fin.**


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